Teacher: 'I did what I had to do'

STOCKTON - Misty Doyal was teaching a group of her seventh-graders a math lesson when she heard a blast she knew right away had not been made by a firecracker.

Roger Phillips

STOCKTON - Misty Doyal was teaching a group of her seventh-graders a math lesson when she heard a blast she knew right away had not been made by a firecracker.

It was 9 a.m. on Oct. 8 in Room 32 at Van Buren Elementary in south Stockton, and a student in Doyal's classroom had just fired a single shot from a .22-caliber handgun into the floor.

Doyal, 37, could smell gunpowder as she rushed to the intercom to notify the school's front office. Then she approached one of the tables of five students in her classroom.

The rubberized floor under the table was split. No one was injured, but four of the students at the table looked to be in shock. The fifth, the one with the gun, "just sat there," Doyal recalled.

"What is it?" she asked the boy. "Whatever you have, put it on the table. Give it to me."

After about 30 seconds, the boy did as he'd been told. Doyal ordered him to stand in a corner and keep his hands visible. She put a sheet of paper over the gun so the other students wouldn't see it. School security, Principal Ione Ringen and Stockton Unified police officers flooded the room within two minutes.

"I did what I had to do," Doyal said Tuesday, her first public comments since the incident. "I was calm, collected and made sure a lot of the kids were unaware of what was going on."

Doyal was honored at Tuesday night's school board meeting for her cool response to an incident the district has said was an accident. Two boys - an 11-year-old officers say brought the weapon to school and the 12-year-old police say fired it - were arrested.

In retrospect, Doyal said, what happened may prove to have been positive. It has been a difficult year at Van Buren, she said. Before the gunfire, according to Doyal, there were problems with drugs, with fighting, with students being disrespectful to teachers.

But since that single gunshot, Stockton Unified has assigned an assistant principal, a full-time counselor and a second campus safety assistant to Van Buren, and there are plans for a classroom at the school where students will serve their suspensions.

There also have been random backpack checks, metal detectors have been made available to Van Buren, and an assembly was held featuring a contraband-sniffing dog that found some hidden firecrackers.

Tuesday night, the school board approved a contract with the YMCA to bring sports activities to Van Buren, and it adopted a tougher anti-fighting policy for the school's seventh- and eighth-graders. The board's safety subcommittee will meet at 4 p.m. today in the district boardroom to further explore security issues at Stockton Unified schools. Doyal said the shooting "opened a lot of eyes."

She speaks about the events of Oct. 8 with a mixture of sadness and determination. She said she is especially sad for the boy charged with bringing the gun to school. He was one of the few students in her class who was doing grade-level math, a boy she had taught in fourth grade.

"From the fourth grade on, every day, he looked to me for a hug," Doyal said. "Every day, in fifth grade, in sixth grade. ... I don't want him to ruin his life over a thing like this.

"Mistakes happen for a reason. You learn from them. This is just a big mistake. Hopefully he'll learn from this and it will be a life-changing experience for him."

Doyal lives in Lodi with her husband, who teaches at Elmwood Elementary, and their two young daughters. She said she has shed no tears since Oct. 8, but she's had several nightmares since that day.

Van Buren has been savaged by layoffs in recent years. Gov. Jerry Brown visited the school in 2011 to highlight the damage done to schools by budget cuts.

Almost every student attending Van Buren qualifies for free or reduced-price meals. Neighborhood residents have become accustomed to the sound of gunshots. Despite the challenges, Doyal said she wants to stay and make a difference.

"I like working in a school like this, because the kids really need you," she said. "Sometimes you're the only person they have in their life who they trust."